Name Alan Taylor | Role Historian | |
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Education Brandeis University (1986), Colby College (1977) Awards Pulitzer Prize for History, Bancroft Prize Nominations National Book Award for Nonfiction Books The Internal Enemy: S, The Civil War of 1812: Am, William Cooper's Town: Po, American colonies, The divided ground | ||
128 alan taylor american revolutions a continental history
Alan Shaw Taylor (born June 17, 1955 in Portland, Maine) is an American historian specializing in early United States history. He is the author of a number of books about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution and the early American Republic. Since 1995, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction.
Contents
- 128 alan taylor american revolutions a continental history
- Winning the border settling the war of 1812 prof alan taylor historica public lecture yorku
- Education
- Career
- Awards
- Works
- References
Winning the border settling the war of 1812 prof alan taylor historica public lecture yorku
Education
Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977, and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986.
Career
Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He taught previously at the University of California, Davis and Boston University.
Taylor is best known for his contributions to microhistory, exemplified in his William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996). Using court records, land records, letters and diaries, Taylor reconstructed the background of founder William Cooper from Burlington, New Jersey, and the economic, political and social history related to the land speculation, founding and settlement of Cooperstown, New York after the American Revolutionary War.
Taylor is among a generation of historians committed to the revival of narrative history, rejecting the method-driven, quantitative work of the previous generation of "new social historians" and the theory-laden work of more recent "new cultural historians."
Taylor's The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (2006) explored the history of the borders between Canada and the United States in the aftermath of the American Revolution, as well as Iroquois attempts to keep control of some lands. His book The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (2010) also addressed this borderland area and strategies pursued by various groups. The War of 1812 has also been characterized as a continuation of the Revolutionary War, one of what Kevin Phillips described as Cousins' Wars (1999) in his book by the same title.
Professor Taylor is the most recent addition to an exclusive group of five authors to have twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History. In addition to writing books for the general public, he is a regular contributor of essays and book reviews to The New Republic magazine.